Worldcom Swot Analysis
Casey Noble
15 October 2008
Sabo
SWOT Analysis
WorldCom
WorldCom, formerly known as the second largest long distance phone service, had taken its fall and officially took its final name on April 14, 2003. This Company’s mission statement was to “Create a competitive advantage for WorldCom and contribute significantly to WorldCom's business success by promoting business practices that provide greater opportunity for a diverse supplier base." Throughout WorldCom’s lively years, it had great growth through the buying out of other telecommunication companies, such as MCI Communications, Tier 1 ISP UUNET, and had a major part of the internet backbone. On November 10, 1997, this powerful company announced their 37 billion dollar merger, making it the largest in US history. WorldCom had almost become the nation’s top telecommunications provider if the Sprint merger had gone through. This merger couldn’t go through because of the concerns the US Department of Justice had about the possible future monopoly. Although WorldCom had great strength through its time, it also had much weakness, mostly through bad decision making in the accounting department. In 2001, Ebbers made the first critical mistake. He convinced the board of directors to provide him with over 400 million dollars to cover his margin calls. The board had much weakness by actually providing Ebbers with this substantial amount of money. I think that the well educated people on the board should have seen the great risk they were putting out on the whole corporation. From the beginning of 1999, to May of 2002, WorldCom had been hiding the declining earnings of the company by using fraudulent accounting methods. This posed a false picture of the financial growth, so that WorldCom’s stock would go up, when it should have really been going down. In June of 2002, some of the fraudulent accounting had been recognized, which resulted in the firing of Sullivan, the resignation of Myers, and the
15 October 2008
Sabo
SWOT Analysis
WorldCom
WorldCom, formerly known as the second largest long distance phone service, had taken its fall and officially took its final name on April 14, 2003. This Company’s mission statement was to “Create a competitive advantage for WorldCom and contribute significantly to WorldCom's business success by promoting business practices that provide greater opportunity for a diverse supplier base." Throughout WorldCom’s lively years, it had great growth through the buying out of other telecommunication companies, such as MCI Communications, Tier 1 ISP UUNET, and had a major part of the internet backbone. On November 10, 1997, this powerful company announced their 37 billion dollar merger, making it the largest in US history. WorldCom had almost become the nation’s top telecommunications provider if the Sprint merger had gone through. This merger couldn’t go through because of the concerns the US Department of Justice had about the possible future monopoly. Although WorldCom had great strength through its time, it also had much weakness, mostly through bad decision making in the accounting department. In 2001, Ebbers made the first critical mistake. He convinced the board of directors to provide him with over 400 million dollars to cover his margin calls. The board had much weakness by actually providing Ebbers with this substantial amount of money. I think that the well educated people on the board should have seen the great risk they were putting out on the whole corporation. From the beginning of 1999, to May of 2002, WorldCom had been hiding the declining earnings of the company by using fraudulent accounting methods. This posed a false picture of the financial growth, so that WorldCom’s stock would go up, when it should have really been going down. In June of 2002, some of the fraudulent accounting had been recognized, which resulted in the firing of Sullivan, the resignation of Myers, and the